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In the wake of a devastating financial crisis, the Millennial generation has been challenged with the prospect of re-imagining corporate responsibility. Shackled with increasingly global expectations and governmental gridlock, we must be more creative than ever—delegating the responsibilities for humanitarian, global and social causes to a new force for change. In this way, Millennials will demand that business leaders remedy global problems. We will come to expect that the corporate engine lends momentum to larger social causes and to answers questions of rights and responsibilities, rather than profits and costs. The way forward—the way into a world that will champion causes of environmental stewardship, social accountability, and global progress—is by evaluating corporations holistically, rather than through their bottom line.

Millennials will couple business savvy with a global conscience, and expectations of morally-conscious conduct will go hand-in-hand with shareholder value maximization. In the new world we will lead, there is no such thing as “just business,” anymore.

We have seen this trend manifest itself already in four ways: First, the generational prioritization of “cause loyalty” above “brand loyalty”; second, the understanding of corporate undertakings as more than a “zero sum game”; third, the inter-disciplinary tendency of pre-professional ambitions; and finally, the impulse for inter-corporate collaboration, rather than competition.

As Millennials have come of age, there has been a shift away from brand loyalty to cause loyalty with respect to business. Brand loyalty focuses on the products social status in the market place, while cause loyalty focuses on the ideals of the business itself. This is evident in the footwear market where in the last decade Sketchers has fallen out of the limelight and companies such as Toms have emerged, a shift which exemplifies the cause-consciousness of a Millennial consumer. This trend can be largely attributed to our generation’s increased access to the world and awareness of global issues as fueled by technological advances. Simply put: the more we know, the more we care. And this process is self-perpetuating in the best way: we buy Coca Cola because of their Polar Bear ad campaign regarding issues of Global Warming, a pattern which provides positive feedback and profit-based results for social business. Thus marks the birth of a generation whose consumption is based as much on tangible product as it is on company purpose or passion.

This shift reflects an ever-changing attitude regarding worldwide business, consequently necessitating corporate collaboration and fiscal responsibility across sectors. The dichotomy of resource depletion and global development prompts practices centered on social responsibility rather than solely on profit maximization—effectively, a demand for accountability. Especially as data and information become publicly available, a departure from the notion of a zero-sum game propagates corporations’ need to share information to optimize performance. Moreover, competent—yet globally aware—leaders must foster a collaborative climate of practicality and ethics based leadership. With the advent of global technological modernization the ability to communicate across geopolitical boundaries affords future leaders and organizations the ability to adopt a more nuanced global outlook and recognize the limitations of acting alone. For example, USAID initiatives are incorporating a more country-owned process to develop programs instead of solely relying on US-formulated policies. This approach requires a greater sense of corporate collaboration and cultural awareness.

As our generation embarks on this project of raising the standards for corporate responsibility, we in turn begin to re-envision our career ambitions. Millennials have taken an interdisciplinary approach to learning in order to prepare ourselves for careers that may not yet exist. Gone is the world of straight-forward, one-track pre-professionalism; in this newly imagined Millennial world, a holistic approach to learning is a must: M.B.A.s go hand-in-hand with J.D.s and Doctorates, and the highway from elite institutions to Wall Street sees less traffic.

Just as the influence of Ho Kwon Ping sparked our approach to this editorial, so too will the experienced leaders of the previous generation embolden the Millennial vision of this one. A world that looks to transcend bottom-lines will be one of collaboration, mentorship, and the optimism of the Millennial generation.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not purport to reflect the position of the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.